US kindergarten vaccination rates decline again as exemptions keep rising, CDC data shows

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data on Monday showing that vaccination rates among American kindergartners declined once more in the 2025-2026 school year compared with the prior year. Coverage has been eroding steadily since the 2019-2020 school year, when the country had reached roughly 95 percent coverage — the level considered necessary to prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases from spreading within communities. The newest figures show the country continuing to drift further from that benchmark.

Nationwide, just 92.4 percent of kindergartners received the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 2025-2026, down slightly from 92.5 percent the year before. Coverage for the DTaP vaccine, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough, also slipped, from 92.1 percent to 92.0 percent. More than half of US states recorded declines in coverage for MMR, DTaP, polio, and chickenpox vaccines. Only ten states currently meet or exceed the 95 percent MMR threshold: West Virginia, Connecticut, Maine, New York, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Maryland, Massachusetts, California, and New Mexico.

While overall vaccination coverage continued its gradual slide, the number of children granted exemptions from school vaccination requirements grew at a faster pace. In the 2025-2026 school year, 4 percent of kindergartners held a nonmedical exemption — one based on personal or religious beliefs — up from 3.2 percent the previous year. Medical exemptions, by contrast, have remained steady at around 0.2 percent in recent years.